The Folly of Generals: How Eisenhower's Broad Front Strategy Lengthened World War II

By David P. Colley

The author of The Road to Victory delivers “a well-written, easy to read, and concise summary of the options available to Eisenhower and the Allies” (Journal of Military History).

Imagine how many lives would have been saved had the war in Europe finished in December 1944 instead of five months later . . . David Colley analyzes critical mistakes made by the Allied supreme commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, in the last nine months of the war. He argues that had Eisenhower been more adept at taking advantage of several potential breakthroughs in the Siegfried Line in the fall of 1944 the war in the European Theater of Operations might have ended sooner.

The book details the American penetration of the Siegfried Line in mid-September and their advance into Germany at Wallendorf before the troops were called back. It also examines in detail operations in the Stolberg Corridor and the actions of General Lucian Truscott. It compares the battles at Wallendorf and Stolberg with Operation Market Garden, and assesses the effectiveness of these operations and the use of the troops. Eisenhower later called off another operation in November 1944, already in progress, to cross the Rhine and destroy the German 1st Army north of Strasbourg. American and German generals believe this operation would have shortened the war.

The Folly of Generals explores these potential breakthroughs—along with other strategic and tactical mistakes in the ETO and in Italy, some never before revealed—that might have shortened the war by a considerable margin.

“Throughout the book, Colley uses postwar comments by German generals to support his arguments.” —New York Journal of Books

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casemate Publishers
• Release date: Mar 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781612009759

David P. Colley

David P. Colley is a full-time author and freelance writer specializing in military history and military affairs. He is the author of six books relating to World War II and has written numerous articles on military matters.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Why Market Garden?

Sunday morning, September 17, 1944 – the residents of Vlissingen and Middleburg and other hamlets in coastal Holland detected a distant drone rising over the North Sea to the west that slowly increased in volume. It was not unusual in the Netherlands at this moment in time to hear the sound of approaching aircraft after four years of war and Nazi occupation that began in 1940. The Dutch were accustomed to the pounding roar of overflying bombers, heavy British Lancasters and Stirlings at night and the deep bass hum in the early mornings from four-engine American B-24s and B-17s flying at great heights on their way to bomb targets in Germany. The nighttime British bombers always maneuvered to avoid German radar detection and antiaircraft fire and came singly or in streams, the in-line Merlin engines whining as they cut through the blackened skies. The American 8th Air Force bombers flew at 25,000 feet and were bunched in tight box-like formations to fend off German Messerschmitt and Focke Wulf fighter planes. The throb of their radial engines was muted by their extreme altitude. On this misty Sunday morning of the 17th, however, the sound was different. The drone of the oncoming planes was like low notes on an organ growing in intensity as they approached.

Soon an armada of low-flying aircraft became faintly visible on the horizon, like a far-off flock of migrating geese, hundreds of them spread in a column 10 miles wide and stretching 100 miles in length all the way back to England. The planes came in at 1,500 feet, twin-engine American C-47 Skytrains, their white star markings accentuated by their olive drab coloring, and British Dakotas, the RAF’s designation for the C-47, with their red, white, and blue wing and fuselage roundels. Some of the planes trailed cables that pulled snub-nosed American Waco CG-4 gliders, and British Halifax and Stirling bombers, pressed into service, were towing even larger British Horsa and Hamilcar gliders. The aircraft were part of a huge airborne operation code-named Market Garden, an Allied airborne and land attack to capture a bridge over the Nederrijn River (the lower Rhine) at Arnhem in the Netherlands that the British and the Americans hoped would bring a quick end to World War II in Europe. Once the Rhine was bypassed the Allies were confident the enemy’s battered armies would see the hopelessness of their cause and surrender or be destroyed with overwhelming force.

As the planes continued to their drop zones in Holland, men, women, and children poured from their homes, some climbing to the rooftops, and many coming out of church services, to witness this once-in-a-lifetime extravaganza, the sky filled with oncoming transports, fighters, and bombers winging their way into battle. Were these Allied planes and paratroopers coming to liberate the Dutch after five years of Nazi rule? The Dutch hoped and prayed that they were; the people of Holland were on the brink of starvation. Like other Nazi-occupied countries, the Germans sent many young and middle-aged men to work in German factories as slave labor and took manufactured goods and agricultural products from them for use by the German people and their armies. Little food was left in the Netherlands.

Awe-struck too were the German occupiers who saw the armada as the hand of doom for the German nation. Colonel General Kurt Student, Luftwaffe commander of the German 1st Paratroop Army stationed near Arnhem, was stunned as he gazed up at the massive fleet passing overhead. Student was no stranger to warfare and to the use of raw military power. He served as a pilot in World War I and in World War II he commanded Germany’s paratrooper units. During the German invasion of Holland in 1940, Student led the first major airborne attack in history when his troops became engaged in the Battle for The Hague. He later led the airborne invasion and conquest of Crete, driving British forces out in May 1941. The German conquest of Crete motivated the British and American Allies to create and perfect their own airborne units. As he watched the hundreds of planes and gliders dropping enemy troops near his Arnhem headquarters he remarked wistfully, Oh, if ever I’d had such means at my disposal. Just once, to have this many planes!¹

The night before Student had warned that an attack was imminent because of heavy Allied military ground traffic south of the Maas–Waal canal in southern Holland in a sector held by the British XXX Corps. The XXX Corps was moving up men and tanks to the jump-off line on the Dutch border in preparation for the ground attack the following day. The XXX Corps would advance overland in Holland through German-held territory to relieve the American and British paratroopers dropped along a path to Arnhem.

The townspeople in large swaths of the country also had an inkling of what might be coming that fateful next day. All during the night of September 16 they heard the crump of exploding bombs, the drone of bombers, and, during the day, the throaty roar of fighter planes swirling overhead as the Allied air forces pounded German antiaircraft positions throughout much of the country with particular attention to the Arnhem area. The Allied airmen were hoping to ensure that most of the unarmed and vulnerable air force transports arriving the next morning would have a fighting chance of getting through to prearranged drop zones.

The hundreds of C-47s and gliders that took off from bases in England in the early morning hours of September 17, were filled with paratroopers from the American 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, the 82nd All American Airborne Division, and the British 1st Airborne Division, dubbed the Red Devils. The 82nd had fought in Sicily and Italy and, along with the 101st, parachuted into Normandy the night before D-Day where they were scattered all over the Cotentin Peninsula. But with so many small units spread over the countryside, the Germans were confused about the whereabouts of their enemies. The Red Devils were veterans of the campaigns in North Africa and in Italy.

If the Red Devils were successful at Arnhem they would capture the bridge in the city that arched over the Lower Rhine and open the way around the Siegfried Line defenses. They would hold the bridge and fend off German counterattacks until XXX Corps arrived three days later to reinforce them and secure the bridge. The Siegfried Line was a narrow, fortified corridor of defense points constructed in the 1930s that began at Cleve, Germany, a few miles south of Arnhem, and stretched more than 400 miles along the German border through Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France to Switzerland near Basel.

The German Siegfried Line was studded with a belt of pyramid-shaped concrete tank traps known as Dragon’s Teeth, four feet in height, and as many as 18,000 interconnecting bunkers and pillboxes designed to stop any invading enemy. German engineers also made use of rugged terrain in the Aachen-Hürtgen Forest region and in the Schnee Eifel farther south along the border with Luxembourg to fortify the frontier. The line was a mighty endeavor involving thousands of workers and millions of tons of concrete and steel. The Allies feared the struggle they faced trying to break through the line and devised Operation Market Garden as a way to bypass the border and advance to the Ruhr industrial region that supplied the Wehrmacht with 50 percent or more of their tanks, aircraft, and guns.

Market Garden was an abrupt change in Allied strategy that had been employed by American and British armies as they advanced through northern France and the Low Countries in the summer of 1944. After the D-Day landings, the German 7th and 5th Panzer Armies contained the Allies in a narrow bridgehead in Normandy for nearly two months and fought valiantly, taking heavy casualties and gaining few replacements. But the weight of the ever-increasing British and American armies in troops, tanks, and guns being shipped to Normandy was too much for the Germans. The Allies also commanded the air and attacked anything that moved on the ground. The Americans finally brought in hundreds of heavy bombers and hundreds more fighter bombers to pulverize a small section of the German front occupied by the crack panzer division, Panzer Lehr. When the smoke cleared the German front line was shattered. Both the German armies broke in late July and the Americans pushed their troops through a breach in the German lines and the enemy stranglehold on Normandy crumbled.

Hitler attempted to stem the Allied advance out of Normandy a few days later by ordering a massive counterattack designed to drive a wedge between American and British forces. Hundreds of German tanks and thousands of troops led the way and formed a narrow salient between Allied forces that was easily crushed. They were halted and there were catastrophic German losses around the Norman town of Falaise. The German High Command begged Hitler to forgo the attack but in vain, and as many as 10,000 Wehrmacht troops were killed and 50,000 more taken prisoner in the failed German counterattack. The remnants of the two once-powerful German armies barely escaped encirclement and destruction and the survivors began a disorderly retreat over the Seine River and across northern France that ended only when they reached the Siegfried Line defenses where they hoped to stop the rout. The Allies pursued their foe with a continuous, unbroken front that was a wide net, the broad front strategy, also referred to as the spread formation.²

When planning the invasion of France prior to D-Day, Allied commanders believed the war in the ETO would be a lengthy slugging match with the German army fighting for every inch of ground across France and retreating to natural defense lines like the Seine River and then the Meuse River. It was a cautious strategy based largely on the experiences of World War I where both sides fought it out in trenches. It was also based on the Allies’ experiences and knowledge of the quality of German arms in the preceding years. The D-Day plan, not only for the initial assault on the beaches, but for the invasion of northwest Europe into Germany, envisioned the Allied armies advancing like a giant plow slowly pushing the enemy back. Masterful breakouts, spearhead attacks, and end runs into the enemy’s rear were not part of the plan. The Allies expected to drive the enemy to the Seine by D+90, or early September, and reach the German frontier only by May 1945. Planners thought it would take many more months after that to bring the Germans to their knees.³

By early September, however, the two armies of the American 12th Army Group, the 1st Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, and the 3rd Army, commanded by General George Patton, were poised on the German frontier after their lightning drives across France. Hodges’ army was positioned around Aachen and Wallendorf, and Patton’s was farther south and closing on Germany near Metz, France. But against the prepared defenses around Metz, the 3rd began facing stiffening enemy resistance for the first time since the breakout at Normandy.

Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, with its two armies, the Canadian 1st, commanded by General Harry Crerar, and the British 2nd Army, commanded by British General Miles Dempsey, operated on the northern flank of the broad front, advancing along the French coast and into Belgium and southern Holland.

After five weeks of exhilarating advances in late July and throughout August, the troops were tired, vehicles and tanks were wearing out, and supplies of ammunition, rations, and gasoline were running low as the Allies advanced some 435 miles from the Normandy beaches to the edge of the German heartland. The German army, on Hitler’s orders, continued to hold all the major French and Belgium channel ports, except Cherbourg that had been liberated by the Allies shortly after D-Day. Cherbourg’s port, once restored after German demolitions, could handle only a small portion of the Allies’ overall logistical needs and Hitler’s strategy forced the bulk of supplies to be delivered through the Normandy beaches, several hundred miles from the German frontier, depriving the Allies of close-up logistical support. But, ironically, the order also deprived the Germans of some 250,000 troops, trapped in the ports, who might have slowed or even halted the onrushing Allies.⁴

The Normandy area was brimming with supplies of all kinds and the famed Red Ball Express swung into action to deliver supplies to the front. The Red Ball was an operation of some 6,000 trucks, mostly two-and-a-half-ton deuce and a halfs, Jimmies, driven mostly by African-American service troops, that transported supplies over a one-way, loop highway to delivery points near Brussels, Belgium, and to Verdun in France. Red Ball trucks raced through the French countryside, day and night, sometimes through pockets of enemy troops. They carried critical supplies, gasoline, ammunition, medical supplies, and food to the front-line troops. The 8th U.S. Air Force was called in to airlift supplies to the advancing Allied armies in England-based B-24 bombers, diverting them from their primary mission of precision bombing of German industrial targets. Hundreds of C-47s from the Allied air transports commands were also enlisted to haul supplies but there were never enough trucks, bombers, and air transports to carry all the needed supplies. The French railroads were in shambles from the pre-invasion bombing to prevent the Germans from bringing up reinforcements and concentrating their forces against the D-Day invasion beaches. By the time the Allied advance reached the Siegfried Line it was slowing to a crawl, exactly when they needed a lightning blow to end the war.

Field Marshal Montgomery had such a plan in mind as he reached Belgium after a dash across France, and so did Patton whose 3rd Army had advanced into Lorraine that bordered the German Reich. They called on Eisenhower to alter his broad front strategy and concentrate Allied forces for a smashing, knife-like blow into Germany. Both Montgomery and Patton argued that the German army in the west was so battered and broken it had taken 300,000 casualties in France since June 6, by some estimates more than 500,000 men, few of whom had been replaced; most replacements were men recovered from wounds. Both generals argued that a concentrated thrust employing tens of thousands of Allied troops would easily break through the thin enemy Siegfried Line defenses and smash its way to the Rhine River, Germany’s last line of defense in the west. The Allies could then capture the Ruhr or the Saar industrial areas, and, if ordered, make a rapid advance to capture Berlin. The question that hung in the air was who would lead the attack, Montgomery or Patton? The Allies could not support two advances at the same time.

When the German 7th and 5th Panzer Armies gave way in late July and began their retreat in disarray across northern France, the supreme command considered using the idle Allied paratroopers in England to drop behind the retreating enemy to create a blocking force, trapping the enemy in pockets that could easily be destroyed. The call to the paratroopers went out six or seven times in late July and August only to be canceled at the last minute; the objective had already been reached by the rapidly advancing ground forces. The paratroopers returned to their barracks to fret and languish as they waited for the call to join the fight. It would come on September 17 with the Arnhem bridge as the objective, remembered today as A Bridge Too Far.

Eisenhower chose Montgomery to deliver the fatal blow in the Market Garden operation using the three airborne divisions, the U.S. 82nd, the 101st and the British 1st Airborne Division, along with the 60,000 or so ground troops in the British XXX Corps which consisted of the Guards Armoured Division and the 43rd and 50th Northumbrian Infantry Divisions. Market was the code name for the attack by the airborne divisions and a Polish airborne brigade, and Garden was the code name for the overland attack by XXX Corps, led by Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks, through an enemy-held stretch of Holland. Horrocks was a veteran of the North African campaign and the recent advance across France.

Horrocks had served during World War I and with an Allied force that landed in Russia after the 1917 revolution with the objective of helping to defeat the Bolsheviks. He was an excellent athlete as well as soldier and had competed in the pentathlon in the 1924 Olympics. At the outset of World War II he served as a battalion commander in France under Montgomery. When Monty commanded the British 8th Army in North Africa he named Horrocks as commander of XIII Corps. Horrocks was severely wounded in a German strafing attack in Tunisia in 1943 and was out of action until called back to command XXX Corps in France and on the advance to Arnhem. He was considered one of the best Allied commanders.⁵

Market Garden was to employ as many as 100,000 American and British troops, more than 5,000 Allied aircraft, thousands of vehicles, and tons of supplies including vast stores of gasoline. The American airborne troops would overfly 50 miles of enemy-held Dutch territory, drop in specific spots, and hold strategic points along a corridor for XXX Corps’ advance from the Belgium border. XXX Corps had the heavy weaponry – artillery and tanks – that the airborne units lacked. The British 1st Airborne Division was designated to drop near Arnhem and move quickly to capture the bridge over the Lower Rhine.

General Horrocks was expected to push his tanks through miles of German-held territory in two to four days, to reinforce the British 1st Airborne Division and to open a supply corridor to the city. Once in Arnhem his forces were to help secure the Rhine bridge held by the British paratroopers who had been dropped on the outskirts of the city about seven miles from their objective.

The American 82nd Airborne Division was to descend on a zone stretching from Grave to Nijmegen and was to capture crossings over the Maas and Waal rivers, including the multi-span bridge at Nijmegen. The 101st was to capture canal and river crossings between Eindhoven and Veghel.⁶ If the plan worked to perfection the American airborne divisions would hold open their respective territories for XXX Corps while staving off any German counterattacks along the single road to Arnhem. But even the best plans in war seldom survive once the action begins.

Market Garden had the approval of the highest-ranking officers in the Allied European command including Eisenhower. For some weeks, American army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall was encouraging Eisenhower to deliver a crippling blow to the enemy by employing some or all of the five airborne divisions that sat idle and restive in Britain. The airborne forces constituted a sizable reserve of about 60,000 superbly trained paratroopers, many of them combat veterans, anxious to join the fight. The men from the 101st and 82nd, and the British 6th Airborne Division, about 35,000 men, had done their job after parachuting into Normandy the night before D-Day, confusing the Germans, blowing and capturing bridges, cutting communications, and drawing enemy troops away from the landing beaches where ground troops from two American infantry divisions and British and Canadian divisions would land by sea the next morning. Their mission accomplished, the paratroopers were withdrawn to England to refit and await another call to action. American Air Force Chief of Staff, General Henry Hap Arnold, also lobbied to get the paratroopers into action to make use of the hundreds of transport aircraft, principally C-47s, that he believed were also under-utilized.

Other generals, British and American, thought some kind of operation that might lead to the quick, final defeat of the Germans was in order. American General Lewis Brereton, commander of the Allied Airborne Army in England, also was eager to get his divisions into action. So, when Montgomery laid out his plan for Market Garden there was little opposition. It was proposed during the 1st week of September and executed just over a week later on the 17th.

The Germans, including the Wehrmacht’s commander in the west, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, knew of the Allied airborne reserve in England. He believed the Americans and British would soon make use of these troops, calculating that they would be dropped behind the thin German defenses along the Siegfried Line, and possibly centered on Arnhem.

While Market Garden had high-ranking advocates, there were those who questioned its chances for success. Colonel Oscar W. Koch, the U.S. 3rd Army’s intelligence chief, warned that the Wehrmacht was still capable of putting up strong resistance and would fight until destroyed or captured.⁷

Three months later Koch was even more prescient. In December 1944, he warned Patton that intelligence indicators pointed to an impending attack against 1st Army troops by German forces in the Ardennes. Most high-ranking officers at the time did not believe that the enemy had the capability for any kind of major attack. Patton, however, took Koch’s word to heart and prepared to shift some of his 3rd Army to the Ardennes in the event of a German attack. But in the week before Operation Market Garden was launched, few if any were heeding Koch’s warnings.

General Dempsey warned that reports from the Dutch underground should be taken very seriously, that the Germans were increasing their strength in the Arnhem area.⁸ Major Brian Urquhart, intelligence chief for the British 1st Airborne Corps, who would in later years become an Undersecretary of the United Nations, also warned that aerial photographs taken by Spitfire reconnaissance aircraft showed enemy tanks in the area near the Arnhem drop zone. His findings were dismissed and he was told by higher-ups that the tanks were undoubtedly battle-damaged and would be useless in a fight. For his effort, Urquhart was declared hysterical and suffering from exhaustion and was later sent on leave.

While the shortcomings of Market Garden were known, its advocates believed the advantages outweighed the limitations. The Germans were reported in most intelligence reports to be on their last legs with only a thin line of troops facing the Allied armies. Beyond their front line was empty ground and the reports indicated no German reserves of any strength were available to stop the oncoming Allied juggernaut. The time to strike the mortal blow was now.

The die was cast. Nothing and no one was going to abort Operation Market Garden. Even Major Urquhart expressed the exhilarating tension gripping the pre-attack planning. Everyone was so gung-ho to go that nothing could stop them… this was going to be the big show. He didn’t want to miss it, but he was sidelined nevertheless and sent on sick leave.⁹

The mightiest airborne force in history took flight around 9:45 am on the bright Sunday morning of September 17, 1944, as people all over southern England stopped what they were doing to watch the huge airborne armada wing its way to war.¹⁰ Once over Holland the skies filled with multi-colored chutes as the paratrooper landings went without a hitch with the exception of a few losses here and there. Some of the C-47s were shot down by antiaircraft fire but most of the paratroopers were able to exit before the planes crashed. In some cases, the gliders were wrecked on landing; killing and injuring the troops. Nevertheless, the American airborne divisions made textbook landings in their drop zones and the British airborne division came down on its objective seven miles from Arnhem. The battle for the Arnhem bridge had begun and the way into Germany and the end of the 3rd Reich was at hand. But would Market Garden succeed?

CHAPTER 2

Why Not Wallendorf?

On the very day, September 17, 1944, when more than 100,000 Market Garden airborne and ground troops began an operation that required an advance over more than 50 miles of German-held territory to outflank the Siegfried Line at Arnhem, a few thousand American troops of the U.S. V Corps had already breached Germany’s border defenses nearly 200 miles to the south. The V Corps had carved out a small bridgehead on German soil and these Americans were the first Allied troops to breach the Siegfried Line and advance into the Reich. If the corps could be reinforced with a fraction of Market Garden’s materiel support and combat-tested troops, it might accomplish the same objective as Market Garden, break through the Siegfried Line and advance to the Rhine and beyond.

The V Corps’ orders, from General Courtney Hodges, 1st Army commander, were to make a reconnaissance in force with its three divisions into the Nazi homeland with the prospect of capitalizing on the enemy’s weakness along the German frontier. The 5th Armored Division (AD) approached the German border with Luxembourg where it was hoped that, if given logistical support and infantry reinforcements in the days ahead, the Americans might push ahead and forge a small bridgehead and expand it into an outright breakthrough. Then the troops could roll up the thin enemy front and pave the way for an uncontested advance to the Rhine.

The V Corps, one of 1st Army’s three corps, which comprised the 28th and 4th Infantry Divisions (IDs) and 5th AD, arrived at the Siegfried Line after a pell-mell advance across northern France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The corps’ divisions had landed at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, and been involved in heavy fighting in the Normandy bridgehead and across northern France. Commanded by Major General Leonard T. Gerow (pronounced jeer–oh), the corps was part of Hodges’ 1st Army and was positioned along the German frontier midway between Aachen and Trier. The 1st Army’s right flank extended south beyond the Ardennes and was occupied by the U.S. 3rd Army advancing into Lorraine. The 1st and 3rd Armies comprised General Omar Bradley’s 12th Army Group. The two V Corps infantry divisions, along with the 5th AD, were pursuing elements of the shattered German 7th and 5th Panzer Armies fleeing the Allied armies from Normandy.

The V Corps came up against the enemy’s border defenses in early September along a front that stretched some 33 miles. Somewhere in the middle of this ground is Wallendorf, a small village on the banks of the Sauer River that separates Germany and Luxembourg. The bank on the German side rises sharply to a verdant plateau on the Schnee Eifel of lush fields and meandering valleys, some quite deep; copses of thick forests; and small farming villages of solid houses and farmsteads, with their ever-present manure piles.

The Schnee Eifel in Germany is a continuation of the Ardennes in Belgium, but more rugged. It was through the Wallendorf area that General Heinz Guderian launched his attacks against the Low